


A Failed Attempt

by VincentMeoblinn



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Disabled Character, Friendlock, M/M, Sad Story, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 09:43:49
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1092442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VincentMeoblinn/pseuds/VincentMeoblinn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Triggers in Summary) John Watson couldn’t take losing his best friend, so three days after the funeral he attempted suicide… and failed. When Sherlock returns he finds a very changed man in place of his faithful blogger, and sets about caring for him as best he can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Failed Attempt

 

 

 

 

 

Title: A Failed Attempt

Summary: (Triggers in Summary) John Watson couldn’t take losing his best friend, so three days after the funeral he attempted suicide… and failed. When Sherlock returns he finds a very changed man in place of his faithful blogger, and sets about caring for him as best he can.

Warnings: Suicide Attempt (mentioned, not described), No Sex, Brain Damage, Special Needs, Adorable Friendship.

 

“John!” Sherlock called, rushing into the room and shedding his coat and scarf, “John, you won’t _believe_ the day that I’ve had! I chased a wife beater who had broken through his restraining order- nearly killed his ex-wife- through half of London today! We took the _Tube_. Can you believe that? I chased him from one end of it to the other and finally tackled him before he could jump out onto the tracks at the last stop! He was going to _run_ the Underground!”

John smiled up at Sherlock and clapped his hands slowly before holding up a piece to the puzzle he was working on. Sherlock calmly slipped it in place and the man flashed him a grateful smile before searching out the next one. Sherlock began to pace the room.

“He’ll be in jail for a _long_ time. The trial will be in a month. The wife requires surgery before she can testify. My statements won’t be enough, according to Lestrade… has he been by lately?” John nodded in reply to the question and Sherlock, frustrated with his slow progress, finds and fixes the next piece of the puzzle before continuing to pace and speak, “Lestrade says that my testimony won’t be enough to put him away for attempted murder because of my _personality_. He wants sympathy from the jury, so he’ll be bringing the battered wife in. I pointed out that she’d garner more sympathy in a wheelchair with bags hooked up to her- therefore _before_ her surgery- but apparently that was a bit not good.”

John smiled and shook his head, looking mildly amused with Sherlock’s explanation. He’d finished the puzzle, so he knocked it onto the floor and chuckled at the mess he’d made. Sherlock smiled at his eager smile and then watched as he manipulated the wheelchair he was now confined to and crossed the room to Sherlock’s violin stand. He carefully picked the instrument case up and wheeled it slowly over to Sherlock, who picked it up and happily tuned it before striking up a merry song by Mozart. John smiled and clapped before simply settling back to listen to the music he loved. Sherlock played for an hour before his fingers simply refused to go on, then he put the instrument away and stretched out on the couch to relax.

John wheeled over to him and petted his hair a moment. Sherlock smiled up at him and relaxed into John’s petting, but when John fetched a blanket and tried to cover him up he sat up with a frown.

“I can’t stay,” Sherlock informed him, “I’ve got an experiment at home and it’s time sensitive. I have to be back at Baker Street in an hour.”

That was the wrong tac to take, and Sherlock knew it the moment his words left his mouth. John’s face screwed up and he began to sob brokenly. Sherlock knew from previous experience that there was _no_ comforting him when he was like this- he would have to leave and let Mycroft sort it out. Sherlock rose with a pained feeling in his chest, drew on his scarf and coat despite John trying with all his weakened might to pull them back off. He pressed a kiss to spot on the top of John’s head where the hair refused to grow over the bullet wound, as he always did, and then hurried out the door. He could hear John wailing miserably for an entire hallway, and then it simply stopped.

Mycroft appeared with a frown on his face, “They sedated him. I do wish you’d simply move in here or find a flat he can stay in with you.”

 “I’d still have to leave, Mycroft,” Sherlock scoffed, “For cases or to take a walk or to fetch _you_ when he gets like that.”

“If a lack of a nurse is preventing you from moving him from _my home_ , I assure you I’d be thrilled to provide you with one _daily_.”

“I can’t care for him the way you can, you know that,” Sherlock scowled, and fled his brother’s and (for the last three and a half years) his best friend’s home.

Sherlock knew that John had more than two moods- Mycroft had informed him of them- but he never actually saw them; he was only ever aware of Elated John and Devastated John. Elated John was there from the moment Sherlock walked into the room, and Devastated John made an appearance the moment Sherlock put on his coat to leave. Until Sherlock had returned from the dead all anyone had ever seen was Practically Catatonic John; the man who had miraculously survived eating his own gun, but remained in a semi-conscious state of pure misery. John had spent the last three years alternating between being stretched out on a bed at night and being wheeled to a window to stare out at the view by day. He hadn’t cracked a smile or made an unnecessary noise in years; a nurse had noted that he’d make a protesting noise when he needed the toilet and they’d been able to take him off of adult diapers after that, but it had been the only communication he’d uttered besides moans when in pain.

And John _was_ in pain. He had severe neurological damage that resulted in involuntary spasms of his muscles. They were much diminished by the medication he was on, but the medication made him so tired that he was only awake for four hours at a time during the day. It also had rather unpleasant side effects that Sherlock had shuddered upon learning of. He was unable to walk, and being bound to a wheelchair and bed resulted in their own set of aches and pains. On top of all of that, he couldn’t eat due to degeneration of the muscles in his throat- a side effect of the medication- and had to be fed through a tube in his stomach.

Still, that didn’t stop John from looking up and smiling as though nothing had changed when Sherlock had walked back into his life after a three-year absence. For a moment, Sherlock had thought the speech from Mycroft a moment ago had been an elaborate prank to punish Sherlock for leaving them for so long. Then he’d begun his explanation and apology to John and saw that the smile never left. He sometimes let it wane, or made a gesture that showed he understood what was being said, but he didn’t speak or respond properly. Then Sherlock had stepped closer and examined the spot on his head and found that it wasn’t the make-up he’d hoped it was. John really had tried to kill himself because of Sherlock’s faked death… and failed.

Yet, John still responded to Sherlock and had even begun to respond to Lestrade on occasion. The very fact that he understood that Sherlock putting on his coat meant he was leaving- and hadn’t needed to see it occur more than once to figure it out- showed that his mind wasn’t as gone as everyone thought. So Sherlock had given John various tests to determine his IQ and then began to provide him with puzzles, toys, and books. Mycroft had scoffed at first, especially when Sherlock had brought in a box of John’s old medical texts.

“I don’t expect him to _understand_ them, I expect him to _read_ them.”

“He can barely warn someone of an impending bowel movement and you expect him to _read?”_

“The human brain is still a mystery, Mycroft, even to two such as us. By all accounts he should be _dead_ , but a piece of shrapnel in his jaw from Afghanistan deflecting the bullet kept the damage to a minimum and resulted in _this_. John Watson: medical miracle. And you want to sit him in front of a picture window and let him _waste_.”

“So this is it? Your new _experiment_? He’d be so proud.”

Sherlock had ignored him. He didn’t need Mycroft’s permission or approval; he simply went about slowly encouraging John to interact with his surroundings. The first time John started doing things when Sherlock _wasn’t_ there had garnered a phone call from a pleasantly shocked Mycroft. When he’d gone so far as to masturbate for the first time in years- a nurse had caught him in the act- it had garnered a different sort of shocked phone call.

“What am I to _do_ with him? Come and get him! You take care of him now!”

“I haven’t the ability to care for him, and you know that. It’s a perfectly natural occurrence for any healthy male. If it bothers you so much, don’t go in when he’s doing it.”

“How am I to know when he is? Tie a bell to his wrist?” Mycroft had asked in disgust.

Sherlock had rather thought that was funny and tied bells to John just for laughs. John had apparently agreed with the joke and tied one elsewhere. Mycroft had been horrified, Sherlock had been impressed, but no amount of coaxing had gotten him to repeat this sudden ability to tie a knot in string. It appeared to be a fluke.

John had fluke days; days where he was almost normal and Sherlock saw more and more of _John Watson_ in the man’s eyes than Elated John normally displayed; then those days would simply vanish for weeks on end. Usually John would simply backtrack a bit, but sometimes Sherlock would be nearly destroyed by the soul sucking loss of hope as John stared at the puzzles and blocks and dolls blankly, smiling vacantly and drooling, but this was a thankfully rare occurrence.

Then one day John was sitting in his wheelchair ‘reading’ a book while Sherlock rested on the couch in his thinking pose. John turned the page from right to left. Then he turned it from left to right. Then he turned the book upside down and chuckled at it. Sherlock smiled at the sound. He loved John’s laugh- it was the only thing that hadn’t changed about him besides his smile.

“I’m thinking of spending the night,” Sherlock decided to voice, “Would you mind?”

“N-n-no.”

Sherlock sat up so quickly his head spun, “What did you say?”

John smiled at him and turned the page on his book, glanced down at it, and then tore it out. He sometimes did these oddly violent things, destroying things that he’d worked so hard to make or books that he seemed to cherish. Sherlock stood up and hurried to his side this time, determined to find out why he had done so when he’d gone so far as to _speak_ a moment ago.

“Is there something on that page? Give it here.”

John handed it over with a smile and Sherlock studied it from every angle, turning it upside down as John had and squinting at it- just in case is vision required a bit of blurriness to understand what was going through his best friend’s mind. Nothing made sense. It was a page from a children’s book called _The Little Engine That Could_. Sherlock recognized it. John had torn it’s pages out once before and then wept until Mycroft provided him with another copy.

_What does it mean_? _Nothing?_

Sherlock sighed and put the book down on the table. John fetched it and tore out another page, but Sherlock didn’t bother to check on it this time. Instead he snatched up the spare clothes he kept there and headed into the ensuite to change. He didn’t care if John saw him naked, but the nurses had expressed distaste over walking in to tend to John and finding Sherlock starkers. He normally wouldn’t be bothered, but they did provide essential care for his best friend. When Sherlock returned he flopped down on the couch with a sigh.

“I’m tired tonight. I think I’ll sleep… Do you mind?” Sherlock waited with baited breath, but heard nothing except another page being torn from the book, “The nurses will be in soon to tuck you into bed. The one on duty tonight is rather pretty, don’t you think? Just your type?”

Nothing. John put his book down and headed for the toilet with that grunting noise he made. A nurse, who listened in on a monitor when Sherlock was visiting in order to give them the illusion of privacy, met him through the other door and politely shut Sherlock out. They returned with John dressed for bed, his hair wet from a quick shower, and Sherlock watched as two nurses got his friend into bed and tucked him in. John gave him a smirk as they left that almost said ‘ _You’re right, that one is my type_ ,’ but then laid down in silence. Sherlock stared up at the ceiling in silence for several minutes before finally drifting off.

_John stretched out on the bed. It was difficult to get comfortable when one couldn’t move himself or herself from the waist down, but the nurses were always careful to make sure he was in decent position before leaving him for the night. John knew if he tried to get their attention one or more would hurry back in, but he was content for now. Sherlock was nearby. That made everything wonderful. Sherlock being there seemed to make his pain less, his mind clear, and his heart race as though they were running through London together. He lived for the stories of cases and experiments and daring do._

_It was almost as good as being there. Almost._

Fin.


End file.
